What's the difference between laughter and mirth?

Laughter


Definition:

  • (v. i.) A movement (usually involuntary) of the muscles of the face, particularly of the lips, with a peculiar expression of the eyes, indicating merriment, satisfaction, or derision, and usually attended by a sonorous and interrupted expulsion of air from the lungs. See Laugh, v. i.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Enuresis risoria" or "giggle incontinence" is a particular condition characterized by a sudden, involuntary, uncontrollable and complete emptying of the bladder during giggling or hearty laughter.
  • (2) Their hearty laughter far surpassed any private hopes of entertaining this endearingly stodgy bunch.
  • (3) It’s even slower than the public service” (much laughter) “and it’s all stage managed”.
  • (4) Foreign aid, NHS queues, he pressed hot button prejudices, interrupted other speakers, his quick wit won both laughter and applause.
  • (5) It felt just amazing.” But there was laughter when it was suggested that she might extend that record by a few days with gold in the 5,000m.
  • (6) "Thank you for coming, despite some of the hiccups we have had," Tutu said to laughter and applause at St George's Cathedral, Cape Town.
  • (7) Earlier Davies had raised laughter in the Grimond Room in Westminster's Portcullis House when he asked the judge, recently promoted to president of the Queen's Bench Division, whether he had any "regrets" about his report.
  • (8) Perhaps the only thing Katie does get to take home is her antipathy to laughter.
  • (9) When President Obama stands up and says - as he did when he addressed the nation in February 2011 about Libya - that "the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people", it should trigger nothing but a scornful fit of laughter, not credulous support (by the way, not that anyone much cares any more, but here's what is happening after the Grand Success of the Libya Intervention: "Tribal and historical loyalties still run deep in Libya, which is struggling to maintain central government control in a country where armed militia wield real power and meaningful systems of law and justice are lacking after the crumbling of Gaddafi's eccentric personal rule").
  • (10) He is part of a travelling circus, certainly, but the laughter stopped a little while ago.
  • (11) Behind us we could still hear shooting, the screams, the laughter of the bastard as he shot, and his shout to us: "You won't get away!"
  • (12) Laughter is a partly involuntary act involving complex pathways in the central nervous system.
  • (13) That is why I am not the leader of the Labour party,” he said, to laughter and a round of applause.
  • (14) One patient had precocious puberty, epileptic laughter, and abnormal behavior; the other had cerebral seizures.
  • (15) This is what we imagined: the becalmed beauty of the Whitsunday Passage, that spectacular collection of islands protectively nestled inside the Great Barrier Reef, safe from prevailing winds; bright blue languid days gliding over turquoise waters, taking turns at the tiller in our togs; finding our own private cove as the sun goes down; diving into warm pristine waters; the tinkling of intimate laughter; the fizz of champagne and the sizzle of prawns on the barbie.
  • (16) There was laughter, but the room at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles fell silent as it appeared Foster, 50, had a serious point to make.
  • (17) But, she appeared to leave the door open to a possible eventual return, adding to laughter from the crowd that "everyone always says that when they leave these jobs".
  • (18) In a move that sparked laughter and jeers in the Commons, the shadow chancellor pulled out a copy of the Quotations from Chairman Mao to make a point about George Osborne’s attempts to sell off state assets to the Chinese.
  • (19) With the eight lanes of France’s most famous avenue cleared of all traffic on Paris’s first car-free day , the usual cacophony of car-revving and thundering motorbike engines had given way to the squeak of bicycle wheels, the clatter of skateboards, the laughter of children on rollerblades and even the gentle rustling of wind in the trees.
  • (20) Nanu Nanu LG x August 12, 2014 Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) Rest in Peace+Laughter Robin Williams.

Mirth


Definition:

  • (n.) Merriment; gayety accompanied with laughter; jollity.
  • (n.) That which causes merriment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the young Sontag could barely contain her mirth: "I just couldn't stop laughing," she says.
  • (2) She laughs raucously again, mirth appearing to be, incongruously, her way of acknowledging pain.
  • (3) Proving that laughter is infectious – and the best antidote – British actor Emma Watson showed Twitter solidarity with thousands of women who have posted mirthful pictures of themselves in defiance of a call by a Turkish politician for women to stop laughing in public.
  • (4) This was greeted with mirth in the courtroom but he was charged with insulting the president, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison.
  • (5) That, at least, is what many people have insisted from antiquity on – while prompting at the same time all kinds of counter-claims that other species share our expression of mirth (monkeys and, most recently, rats being the most common candidates, though there is one suggestion, in an ancient Jewish commentary, that for some reason Aristotle thought herons were laughers too).
  • (6) Anatomists may take an especial interest in the letters No 1903 to HERDER and No 1904 to CHARLOTTE v. STEIN (both dated the March 27, 1784) which demonstrate the discoverer's mirth in finding out the human os intermaxillare.
  • (7) Provoking MPs' schoolboy mirth at the hint of an innuendo to the female MP, the prime minister joked: "Maybe I should start all over again."
  • (8) My Twitter stream, largely metropolitan, explodes with mirth: this’ll take Farage down a peg or two!
  • (9) SEE YOU IN COURT There was much mirth on Twitter when judges in the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
  • (10) An unfortunate camera angle left pundit Glenn Hoddle's tight trousers in full view, leading to endless mirth on Twitter.
  • (11) Herman Van Rompuy, a man whose very name seems to provoke mirth in anglocentric circles, is known for composing the occasional haiku .
  • (12) Humor measures assessed appreciation (including mirth, subjective ratings, and response sets), comprehension, and production, while competence measures included teacher ratings of classroom behavior, peer reputation, and achievement.
  • (13) He has a soft, almost hushed voice, glasses that press down on the tops of his ears, making them flop over like wings, and a frequent, mirthful smile.
  • (14) The news of Ramos’s remarks sparked mirth amongst the cybersecurity community, who began poking their own holes in the claims.
  • (15) The fact that this particular man has long been characterised as tremendously powerful only adds to the mirth.
  • (16) It is difficult to measure the effect of laughter and mirth on changing one's mindset, but in 12 months not a single instance of death of a child occurred resulting from diarrhea or malnutrition.
  • (17) A different order of difficulty across items, and a different profile of "mirth" responses to the items did, however, correlate with site of lesion.
  • (18) Gallingly, the elevation has also exposed him to the mirth of his old friend Richard Rogers , whose own life peerage he had previously enjoyed teasing.
  • (19) As Claudius said in Hamlet: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” Weddings, to me, feel heavy with expectation, pregnant with emotion, saturated with hope, fear and hard-to-keep promises.
  • (20) To detect changes in these components during a mirthful laughter experience, the authors studied 10 healthy male subjects.